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Clear Concept
The great Victorian architect Sir Gilbert Scott wrote of the Midland Hotel at St Pancras, one of his finest and most widely-praised works: 'My own belief is that it is possibly too good for its purpose? Few, if any, of Scott's present-day successors would speak with such lofty condescension of the clients who pay their fees and the users who bring their buildings to life, certainly not Sir Norman Foster. Indeed, designing in collaboration with clients to create buildings which meet the needs of users is a basic tenet of the Foster credo.
The airport terminal at Stansted, opened in March 1991, was the outcome of the sometimes lively but always amicable collaboration between 'the two Normans' —Foster and Payne. Sir Norman Payne, chairman of BAA at the time that the terminal was commissioned and built, was an engineer by training. A shrewd businessman (he successfully steered the company through the privatisation process), Payne insisted that he cared about 'efficiency and cleanliness, not architectural details', but had an eye for a good building. Having won the planning battle — which began in the 1960s — to develop Stansted as London's third airport, he backed Norman Foster's vision of a new sort of airport terminal, a single-level structure characterised by 'calm, clarity, and convenience' and reflecting the 'quest for richer and more sculptural spaces' which has typified Foster's architecture in the 1980s and 1990s. Foster and his team aimed at a 'celebratory' and 'uplifting' effect. The critical consensus is that they succeeded triumphantly. Stansted ranks high in the Foster canon — even Leon Krier, for example, had to concede his admiration for it.
A random sample of travelers using the terminal in recent months produced equally positive responses. People like Stansted's legendary qualities of space and natural light, its 'legibility' and convenience. Many of the 6000-plus staff who work in the airport, whether for BAA or for its 'business partners' (airlines, retailers and immigration and customs services included), compare the terminal favourably with other airports. 'It's a happy place,' says Peter Willis, who works as a terminal duty officer. 'Very open and light— and you have views out? Willis used to work at Heathrow, 'so busy and confined' in comparison. Comparing the two airports is, of course, a slightly artificial exercise. Designed to cater for 8 million passengers annually, Foster's building will process rather fewer than 5 million in 1996. Stansted is, in fact, growing fast (23 per cent in 1995-96), but still lags far behind Heathrow (55 million passengers a year) and Gatwick (23 million). Terminal 5 at Heathrow has been designed (by Richard Rogers Partnership) to handle around 50 million people a year.
Foster's terminal has lived up to its promise — it is not only practical but popular with its users. Patrick Hannay's 'fear that the culture of Fosters and that of Stansted users will not mesh like they need to' (AJ 29.5.91) has proved to be largely unjustified. Andrew Gray of Air UK, which carries more than a third of all Stansted passengers to 22 destinations around Europe, says that the airport 'has real appeal' The Foster terminal has, he believes, been a strong selling point, especially for the lucrative business trade. 'You could criticise some aspects, but Foster did a very good job: says Gray. Some of the changes which have taken place over the last five years please Gray rather less — they suggest a 'downmarket' emphasis which is at odds with the stylish image he wants to project but which itself reflects BAA's belief that the typical Stansted user is a little down-market (40 per cent are from social groups A and B, compared with 53 per cent at Heathrow).
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